When I first got the idiotic idea to mail my diary to strangers as a zine, I wondered how much I could say about myself, before running out of anything that hadn’t already been said. Obviously, I’m not an interesting person, even to me, and today feels like the day there’s finally nothing left to say. 

I’m fat, introverted, and have no friends. Certainly no ladyfriends. Also no career, no money. I’m missing several teeth, and live in the slums with a drug addict who can’t quite pay his rent. This is my life.

Had no gigs today, so I thought about putting up more “I’ll do anything” posters, but nah. Someone rips all my posters down within days, and I’ll be out of town next week, so postering today would be pointless.

Instead I spent the day sitting in my bedroom, killing roaches, petting Pike’s cat, reading zines, and looking out the window, bored silly. Now you’re bored, too.

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Then Pike came pounding on my door, and invited me to join him for a movie, John Carpenter’s Village of the Damned. Carpenter is like an anti-Hitchcock, cranking out scary movies that never scare me, with no surprises but plenty of gore. Pike is my flatmate, though — and he paid me the money he owed for the rent (I didn’t ask and don’t care where he got it; probably by selling some of his drugs).

He says he hates going to the movies alone, so we’re off to the AMC Kabuki 8, for their ‘twilight discount hour’…

♦ ♦ ♦

And hello, I’m back. Like most of Carpenter’s films, it was predictable and forgettable, not particularly bad but not particularly good, not worth the bother of seeing, and not worth the bother of writing a review. Instead I’ll review the flatmate:

Pike isn’t someone I’d see a real movie with. He’s a talker, and there are few greater annoyances in 20th century civilization than talkers at the movies. He kept tapping my elbow with whispered asides, but at least he whispered. If it had been a movie I’d actually wanted to see, I would’ve been seriously miffed, but since it was trash, what the heck, I made a few wiseacre comments myself.

We said more to each other during the movie than before or after, walking to, waiting for, and riding on the bus. He talked about music (I have slight interest) and drugs (no interest) and friends of his and what music and drugs they like (again, no interest).

On the ride home he wore headphones and listened to music, so I’m guessing he found me as fascinating as I found him.

We weren’t two buddies hanging out. We’ll never be friends, which is OK — he’s my flatmate, is all. At least I don’t see us being enemies, and I don’t dislike him. He stays out of my room, out of my life, and he’d be a perfect flatmate if he paid the rent on time, and lost the girlfriend.

When I asked him where his girlfriend has been lately, he said, “Visiting family, but she’ll be back.” He said it with a sad voice, though, and not even a hint of a smile, as if he dislikes his girlfriend as much as I do.

Maybe everyone’s life, not just mine, is pathetic.

Pathetic Life
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